Guy Stroumsa, Professor Emeritus at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem and Oxford University, on "Teaching the Abrahamic Religions: A Subversive Discipline"

Description

Oddly enough, the
comparative study of the three main monotheistic religions is nowadays not a
common epistemological stance among historians of religions. We should reflect
on the reasons for the relative dearth of serious comparative studies, and on
the implicit and explicit entailments of such studies.

A methodological
assumption demands that the so-called major religions should not be perceived as
distinct monolithic blocks which are then to be compared with each other.
Rather, we should conceive the development of these major religious and ethical
traditions as a result of constant processes of exchange, adaptation, and
demarcations.

The talk will
seek to identify the conditions for a heuristically fruitful comparative
approach to monotheistic systems. In order to do so, we shall seek to approach
our topic through the main categories of any religious system, theoria
versus praxis, or myths and doctrines versus rituals and institutions.
In order to avoid hypostatizing "the three monotheisms" as a singular
unit, rather than three individual religions, the structural and
phenomenological approach should remain anchored in the specific historical and
cultural contexts.

About the Speaker

Guy Stroumsa is the Martin Buber Professor Emeritus of Comparative Religion, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and Professor Emeritus of the Study of the Abrahamic Religions and Emeritus Fellow of Lady Margaret Hall, University of Oxford. Professor Stroumsa’s research addresses the religious history of the Mediterranean world and the Near East in late antiquity. He has published eleven books, edited or co-edited nineteen, and authored more than one hundred and thirty articles. His most recent book is The Making of the Abrahamic Religions in Late Antiquity (Oxford, 2015).

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